Key ObamaCare Program Is Already Broke

Entitlements: The $5 billion fund set up by ObamaCare to cover new high-risk insurance pools in each state from pre-existing conditions is already running out of money — a full year before projections.

So why should anyone believe ObamaCare's overall cost projections are any more accurate?

Panicked to control mushrooming costs in its pre-existing conditions insurance plan, or PCIP, the Health and Human Services Department is having to curtail benefits to cancer patients, among others.

It's a bad omen for the larger plan.

ObamaCare funded the PCIP with $5 billion to cover patients with pre-existing conditions from 2010 to 2014. Less than a third of the people HHS projected would enroll in the plan actually signed up for the coverage.

Yet despite the low enrollment, the plan is broke. In fact, it started running out of money at the beginning of this year, which means it busted its budget a full year ahead of projections.

In a 2012 report, HHS conceded that it had miscalculated (though not until page 11 of its 15-page report): "On average, the PCIP program has experienced claims costs 2.5 times higher than anticipated."

Now it's cutting off coverage.

"I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me," a 61-year-old Virginian with breast cancer complained to the Washington Post.

The crisis at PCIP is a harbinger of things to come for the rest of ObamaCare.

Americans can look forward to the same cost overruns followed by cost controls followed by curtailed benefits followed ultimately by denial of care.

Controlling this massive new entitlement will require government-mandated rationing of medical services and care for the sick and higher taxes for the middle class.

If the Democrats in Congress and the White House miscalculated how much it would cost to fund hundreds of thousands of ObamaCare applicants with pre-existing medical problems, imagine how badly it's low-balling the cost of subsidizing millions of other uninsured Americans, who'll be eligible for a generous array of "free" preventive-care services?

Imagine how badly they're underestimating the cost of expanding Medicaid?

The higher-than-expected costs from PCIP "could be an indication that other cost projections for ObamaCare are also underestimated," the Heritage Foundation recently understated on its blog.

That's more like a statistical certainty. In 1965, the Johnson administration figured Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. Its actual cost was $110 billion. Now it's almost $600 billion and climbing.

Obama's comically named Affordable Care Act doesn't fully go into effect for another nine months, when some 30 million uninsured crash the medical system (not counting illegal immigrants).

Yet it's already exploded original cost estimates.

In its first decade, ObamaCare will cost twice as much — more than $2 trillion — than first projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama in 2009 promised to create a new health-delivery system that "cuts costs" and won't add "one dime to the deficit." He's already practicing red medicine, in more ways than one.

Entitlements: The $5 billion fund set up by ObamaCare to cover new high-risk insurance pools in each state from pre-existing conditions is already running out of money — a full year before projections.

So why should anyone believe ObamaCare's overall cost projections are any more accurate?

Panicked to control mushrooming costs in its pre-existing conditions insurance plan, or PCIP, the Health and Human Services Department is having to curtail benefits to cancer patients, among others.

It's a bad omen for the larger plan.

ObamaCare funded the PCIP with $5 billion to cover patients with pre-existing conditions from 2010 to 2014. Less than a third of the people HHS projected would enroll in the plan actually signed up for the coverage.

Yet despite the low enrollment, the plan is broke. In fact, it started running out of money at the beginning of this year, which means it busted its budget a full year ahead of projections.

In a 2012 report, HHS conceded that it had miscalculated (though not until page 11 of its 15-page report): "On average, the PCIP program has experienced claims costs 2.5 times higher than anticipated."

Now it's cutting off coverage.

"I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me," a 61-year-old Virginian with breast cancer complained to the Washington Post.

The crisis at PCIP is a harbinger of things to come for the rest of ObamaCare.

Americans can look forward to the same cost overruns followed by cost controls followed by curtailed benefits followed ultimately by denial of care.

Controlling this massive new entitlement will require government-mandated rationing of medical services and care for the sick and higher taxes for the middle class.

If the Democrats in Congress and the White House miscalculated how much it would cost to fund hundreds of thousands of ObamaCare applicants with pre-existing medical problems, imagine how badly it's low-balling the cost of subsidizing millions of other uninsured Americans, who'll be eligible for a generous array of "free" preventive-care services?

Imagine how badly they're underestimating the cost of expanding Medicaid?

The higher-than-expected costs from PCIP "could be an indication that other cost projections for ObamaCare are also underestimated," the Heritage Foundation recently understated on its blog.

That's more like a statistical certainty. In 1965, the Johnson administration figured Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. Its actual cost was $110 billion. Now it's almost $600 billion and climbing.

Obama's comically named Affordable Care Act doesn't fully go into effect for another nine months, when some 30 million uninsured crash the medical system (not counting illegal immigrants).

Yet it's already exploded original cost estimates.

In its first decade, ObamaCare will cost twice as much — more than $2 trillion — than first projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama in 2009 promised to create a new health-delivery system that "cuts costs" and won't add "one dime to the deficit." He's already practicing red medicine, in more ways than one.

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